I was going to pull out every machine learning trick in my tool box to compute the optimal search strategy for finding Waldo. I was going to crush Slate’s supposed foolproof strategy and carve a trail of defeated Waldo-searchers in my wake.

So magnificent is the dog’s olfactory brawn — including the ability to sniff out skin, breast, bladder, and lung cancers with an astounding degree of accuracy and to literally smell fear — that to our primitive human perception it appears like nothing short of magic.

Based on 1.5 million hours of acoustical monitoring from places as remote as Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and as urban as New York City, scientists have created a map of noise levels across the country on an average summer day.

Robots and Star Trek funded on Kickstarter

Sony is developing a pair of smartglasses to rival Google Glass product, and has produced a slimmed-down pair of glasses with an integrated screen in the lens.
The Sony Smart EyeGlass acts like a secondary screen for an Android smartphone, displaying information in the view of the wearer, overlaid on top of the real world.

The idea is that, sometime in the not-so-distant future, robots, computer programs, algorithms and other smart devices will inevitably be granted legal status in society—the sort of status that would allow a nonhuman to hold currency, say, or buy a house. Call it “algorithmic personhood.” And just as the nonhumans of tomorrow might drive our cars and make our meals, so too might they opt for creative pursuits.